Writing a Business Plan? Don't Forget About Marketing

A business plan is essentially a layout of a project or venture, which highlights the key prerequisites for the starting and consequently operating the business. It involves a qualitative and quantitative outlay of how business idea itself, the costs involved, and the operation of the business in the short-term, immediate term as well as the long term.

Coming up with a plan on marketing is also important since you will have to market the offerings of your business to other individuals and businesses if you intend to make any sales.

Related source: Business Plan and Template

Marketing is the Backbone of Business

It is crucial to consider the fact that for any business to operate well and succeed, sales have to be made. For sales to be made, the business needs to invest in the requisite resources into its marketing. Therefore, it is vital to ensure that there is a marketing plan in the overall business plan that will direct and guide how the business will conduct its marketing activities.

A marketing plan well in advance will help the business to go in the market well-prepared for different scenarios as far as sales and marketing go. Just like any other component that needs earlier planning, preparation, and consideration; marketing as well requires prior planning if success in sales is to be realized.

For Budgeting Reasons

Business is all about budgeting. It is all about ensuring that the costs and expenditures do not outweigh revenues. Therefore, coming up with a marketing plan or strategies well in advance helps to compute the costs to be incurred, and this helps in the budget-making process.

Marketing requires finances just like any other activity, and since business plans involve coming up with estimated cash flows and other related financial quantitiatives – marketing plans will help in the process of arriving at sound budgets. Factoring in marketing costs as they will help to offset any financial surprises in the future, and this will help to ensure effective operations of the business as far as finances go.

Assessment of Possibilities

Marketing plans will help to paint some realities for the business in the process of writing the business plan. Since marketing is closely linked to sales, then making projections in the business plan will depend on sales – and sales are purely a function of marketing efforts.

Therefore, it is important to factor in marketing, to come up with a concise picture of the costs to be incurred in the process – as well as the revenues to be realized.

Marketing is Relevant to the Target Audience

When coming up with a business plan, you will have a particular segment of customers that you will target. However, targeting that segment of customers is one thing, and reaching out to them is another thing. When it comes to reaching the target audience, you need to ensure that you have a coherent and solid marketing strategy in place. This is why it is important to concurrently develop the marketing plan while working on the business plan, as this will help to influence how you will allocate and deploy resources.

In summary, marketing is a very important area of concern for any venture or business enterprise. When crafting a business plan and making outlays for the use of resources, it is important to put marketing into consideration